8yr-old has been on a diet for SIX years

A British mother has had her daughter on a diet for an astounding six years and the girl is only eight years old.

But Aly Gilardoni, who weighs over 107 kilos herself, believes she is acting in her daughter’s best interests. “Being over­weight dominates my life. I don’t want Corleigh to be like me,” she said in interviews with the British media. She had been featured in Closer magazine.

“I don’t want a fat child. I’m obsessed with how she looks. I want her to be pretty and popular and she wouldn’t be if she was bigger,” she said.

Corleigh has been on the regime since the age of two and is allowed just 700 calories a day – 1,000 fewer than recommended.

The single mother has been accused of inflicting her own problems on the girl.

Christian Jessen, a doctor on Channel 4’s Embarrassing Bodies, told the publication that the mother was inflicting her weight issues on her daughter and that calorie restricting a normal-weight child would be unnecessary and detrimental to her health. “Her immune system will suffer, her growth may be affected, puberty will be delayed and there will be a risk of osteoporosis as well as mineral and vita­min deficiency. More worryingly, from a psy­chological point of view, this could trigger severe anorexia that could ultimately kill her.”

The young girl, who was anaemic until she was five, is now afraid of being fat and is constantly looking in mirrors to check her image. Gilardoni herself has a BMI of 36 and is well over the healthy range, gorges on junk food when her daughter is in bed getting through around 3,000 calories a day.

A recent visit to a nurse showed Corleigh is five pounds underweight but otherwise healthy.